Anonymous IRS Staffer: Everything Comes From The Top

The Washington Post yesterday reported that an IRS staffer who wishes to remain anonymous (understandably) said that everything they do comes from the top. Of course, the administration wants us to believe that these scandals are just the work of some rogue employees, but why would low level workers risk their livelihoods unless they were told to do so? This makes much more sense than anything the higher-ups are telling us.

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office. (Read More)

So they were told to group all of these conservative applications together, while letting progressive applications sail through without a second thought. (Including Obama’s campaign organization turned non-profit.) But of course, we’re expected to believe it was all for the sake of consistency, and was only a failure in customer service. Forget that the big boss was out there every day vilifying the very people that were being grouped together.

Oh, and WaPo might want to be careful quoting anonymous sources that make the administration look bad. They just may find their phone records being secretly tapped.